ENVIRONMENT UNDER THE GUN: LITERATURE AND ENVIRONMENTALISM IN COLD WAR CENTRAL AMERICA By JACOB GOASLIND PRICE A dissertation submitted to the School of Graduate Studies Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey In partial fulfillment of the requirements For the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Graduate Program in Spanish Written under the direction of Jorge Marcone And approved by _____________________________________ _____________________________________ _____________________________________ _____________________________________ New Brunswick, New Jersey October 2019 ©2019 JACOB GOASLIND PRICE ALL RIGHTS RESERVED ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION ENVIRONMENT UNDER THE GUN: LITERATURE AND ENVIRONMENTALISM IN COLD WAR CENTRAL AMERICA by JACOB GOASLIND PRICE Dissertation Director: Jorge Marcone This dissertation explores how Central American poets reinterpret both the political, historical, and cultural value of landscapes that were devastated by new political, economic, and international military governmental policy that coincided with the Cold War. By examining environmentally engaged literature produced between the 1950s and 1990s in Central America, I elucidate how ecological paradigms shifted in the face of North American military, economic, and environmental intervention. The cases of the CIA-led Guatemalan coup in 1954, the Sandinista victory in Nicaragua in 1979, and the Mayan genocide of the 1980s constitute rallying points around which Central American authors renegotiate how humans interact with the environment. Their literary output encapsulates the varied historical and environmental results of anthropogenesis in both Western and indigenous cultures. Authors restructure the political ecology of their respective countries and the fundamental place of humans in nature. Their works reflect changes in environmental history, anti-capitalism, ecotourism, genocide, and indigeneity outside of traditional binary definitions of the Cold War that showcase the inherent ii contradictions in the capitalist promise of modernization and human prosperity. The tangible consequences of the Cold War manifested through Civil Wars and intense environmental degradation, especially throughout the 1970s and 1980s, led writers to challenge the traditional, Western relationship between humans and nonhumans. I examine Central American poets who witnessed the ecological repercussions of the Cold War inscribe into their how nonhumans suffered and questioned how nonhumans responded to their polluted and destroyed environments. Several Nicaraguan writers who published texts close to the Sandinista revolution recognized the potential for nonhumans to collaborate in human politics and imbued them with agency. Indigenous publications from the 1990s exemplify a reflective and meta-poetic transition away from Cold War ideologies. These works contribute to global discussions surrounding land proprietorship and nonhuman subjectivity by challenging traditional Cold War understanding of nature. Their work represents how a variety of Mayan ontologies understand the implications of genocide and ecocide that resulted from the Cold War beyond the global division between East and West. I conclude that one of the tenets of Cold War ideology that necessarily leads to environmental degradation is the North American discourse of security, which transformed Cold War anxieties into the War on Drugs and furthered economic practices that jeopardize ecological welfare in Latin America. iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENT I, Jacob Goaslind Price, acknowledge that a portion of the second section of chapter 2, titled “Living in Slow Violence: The Promise of a New Ecology in Sandinista Nicaragua” will be published in a collection of essays titled Ecofiction and Ecorealities: Slow Violence and the Environmental in Latin America and the Hispanic/Latino/a/Latinx World. Routlege, 2020. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS Abstract ii Acknowledgement iv Introduction 1 Chapter 1: A Material Environmental History of the Cold War in the Poetry of 21 Pablo Antion Cuadra, Ernesto Cardenal, Romelia Alarcón de Folgar and Lizandro Chávez from the 1950s Chapter 2: The War on Nature: Marxism and Slow Violence in El Salvador, 63 Guatemala, and Nicaragua Chapter 3: Peace in the Land or Peace in the Graveyard: Indigenous Critiques of 110 the Cold War in the Poetry of Víctor Montejo and Humberto Ak’abal Conclusion: Securing Latin American Environments: The Ecological Evolution of 155 Cold War Fears into the Twenty-First Century v 1 Introduction Miles upriver in a remote section of the Amazon basin, Christopher Leiningen, played by Charlton Heston in the film The Naked Jungle (1954), readies his cacao plantation for the inevitable invasion of the marabunta ants. In his preparations, Leiningen reveals his two principal reasons for staying to defend his property in the jungle despite the general consensus that fighting the billions-strong soldier ant army is suicidal. The first one he explains while in conversation with The Commissioner, a political liaison between Leiningen and an unnamed South American country: “Fifteen years ago I took [the savages] out of the jungle. If I leave they’ll all go back and that’ll be the end of civilization. If I stay then so will they” (1:08:51 The Naked Jungle). Leiningen’s logic reflects the then one hundred-year-old Latin American categorization of humans as either barbaric or civilized. As a North American, Leiningen portrays the globalized and racialized notion of this dichotomy, taking upon himself the role of a white, civilized savior whose wit and brute force are his instruments of salvation against the insects. Ironically, six minutes later in the film Leiningen confides to his wife that he has burned all of the indigenous workers’ boats rendering them unable to leave the plantation. He claims to stay to civilize the local Amazonian population but ultimately reinforces the racist belief that they are at risk of becoming barbaric and as a consequence forces them to sacrifice their own lives for his selfish desire to protect his wealth. The second reason that Leiningen decided to stay and defend the plantation is his belief that humanity is inherently superior to nonhumans and therefore he can defeat the marabunta even though indigenous groups have failed. When conversing with Inkacha, Leiningen’s 1 2 head indigenous servant and “number one guy,” the American insists through a scientifically based logic his intelligence will save the plantation from the ants: “Ants are strictly land creatures. They can’t swim. Right, Inkacha?” “Monkeys can’t swim but also cross rivers even so.” “The intelligence of monkeys is more than ants and less than man’s.” “Isso. Even so, when ants come, monkeys run.” (1:14:05 The Naked Jungle) This exchange sets up the final confrontation between Leiningen and the marabunta in which he loses the battle with nature for the plantation despite his confidence in himself. Although he extensively prepared for their arrival, the ants cross a moat around the fields on leaf rafts and consume all the cacao trees until they reach the protective walls surrounding Leiningen’s house. Having secured stability in the battle and quarantined the ants outside the walls, he determines to blow up the dam that regulates the plantation’s moat in order to drown all the ants. Leiningen ruminates over the cost of this action to save his life: “It took me fifteen years to build my paradise. Three days to turn it into hell. I’m giving back everything I ever took from the river” (1:26:33 The Naked Jungle). Leiningen eventually recognizes that he cannot defeat the ants without a pyrrhic victory and leaves the jungle with his newlywed bride for the United States before the film fades to black. Although The Naked Jungle takes place in the Brazilian Amazon in the year 1901, the film’s release coincides with the CIA-led Guatemalan coup in 1954 and the evolution of North American military, economic, and environmental intervention in Central America during the Cold War. Leiningen’s outlook on the locals, economic enterprise, and the environment exemplify American mid-century attitudes. Leiningen’s actions, specifically how over the course of fifteen years and three days he significantly altered and damaged the Amazonian ecosystem, mimic the thoughtless consequences of 2 3 North American intervention on the environment. The Naked Jungle neglects to show the aftermath of the flooded plantation. Leiningen and his wife Joana are able to board a ship northward bound, but the indigenous communities whose livelihood is destroyed by modernization’s inability to cope with forces of nature are left to deal with the repercussions. The ecosystem will have to deal with the near-extinction of the marabunta and the plantation waste carried downstream. My dissertation explores how Central American writers make sense of similarly devastated landscapes starting from the 1950s through the 1990s. The ecological issues presented in The Naked Jungle evolve throughout the latter half of the twentieth century and complicate environmental history and surface in conflicts surrounding the environmentally precarious character of hydroelectric projects and the unregulated use of pesticides. The Naked Jungle also showcases issues that would emerge in a new context in the 1980s, such as the Mayan genocide, and indigenous perspectives towards nature. In this introduction, I identify the 1950s as a critical decade in which Cold War politics take a physical toll on Latin American environments and how Central American writers change